I am a Tree...

...We grow intertwined

In yoga, one of my favorite poses is the tree. It feels simultaneously like taking a break from the comparatively strenuous downward dog, but it also engages the class in a challenge of balance and concentration. It’s also the most group oriented pose of the class, led by the cheerful, disciplined, delightful, and enthusiastic Martine.

She always stresses that we are to soak up all the energy in the room and of the practice—and each other. This is certainly the case in tree pose. We shift our weight to our right leg and place our left foot on our right ankle—some even place it way up on the thigh. We raise our arms above our heads, then move into prayer position. We engage our abdominals, relying on our core, to help keep us upright. Then a student begins to count to 20 or 25. The first round is in English, then for the second someone counts in another language, usually French or Spanish, but just this week a volunteer counted in Hindi. Whether we know the language or not, our brains are so focused on counting that the balance comes easy.

And when it doesn’t, when we wobble, all that energy is still there for us.

We simply get back into the pose.

These days, I’m finding that kind of support to be most helpful in these trying times. It might not be overt—I had a writing professor once who referred to serious discussions as “heavy heavies”—and those are great, but they can also be exhausting by putting too much emphasis on, say, the current political situation.

But the tree pose is a light touch kind of support. It just exists, and, in unison, we do it at every class. When we wobble, the class and its energy are there to lift us.

Photo by wasistYOGA on Unsplash

I am reminded of a sublime choral piece I had the privilege to hear a couple years ago at Emory’s Schwartz Center, Majel Connery’s “I am a Tree” as performed by the a cappella group Chanticleer. They sing, in part:

I am an army, I am the mother of them all,

I can regenerate.

I clone a nation from my foot.

I am a country of one.

I am a family; I am a household.

I have skin and I can bruise and I can bleed, and I can cry.

I make my friends. We are connected.

We are inseparable. We grow intertwined.

Except in yoga with Martine, we are not a country of one, we are a team, a United Nations, a forest.